India is known by many to be a magical place. Many would call it one of the most romantic places in the world.
Personally, I don’t think that’s even half of it.
This sense of enchantment is definitely a big part of India. There are dozens of stories regarding magic and everlasting love as a part of Indian folklore. The bond that existed between Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great and his wife Jodhaa Bhai is legendary. The Taj Mahal is an epitome of the love Emperor Shah Jahan had for his wife. India is definitely an incredible place. However, it’s not just the fairytales and dreams.
Over spring break, my family and I went to India for 20 days. In this amount of time, we visited a total of 12 cities. The whole trip was like a roller coaster, but not one that simply went up and down. Nope, this ride was composed entirely of loop-de-loops. There were good times, like when we saw amazing historical buildings, like the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort, and when we got to ride elephants (an incredibly enjoyable experience), and there were stressing times. The kind of times where you think to yourself “Oh crap, another loop already.” The most momentous of these times was when we went on a train ride from Kanpur to Patna.
Kanpur is a city in the province of Uttar Pradesh, where my dad’s side of the family comes from, and Patna is in the province of Bihar, where my mom’s side comes from. In both places, we visited distant family I had never even heard about.
We were taking the train on the 13th day of our trip, from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. By this point, part of me was whining “I am so ready to go home” while another part was saying “Suck it up, Iman.” The train itself was not exactly… nice. But it’s not like we were expecting first class service, even if we hadn’t ever been on a train in India. All we had to do was sleep through it, so we assumed that the experience would be over quickly.
No such luck.
At three in the morning, the train stopped in the middle of nowhere. My mom said “Something’s wrong. The train’s stopped.” My dad, on the other hand, was saying that it was nothing, that we should go back to sleep. We heard people walking briskly behind the dirty cloth that separated our cabin from the narrow aisle of the car. Many were just as confused as we were. Somehow, word got out that the train had caught fire. For a moment, we were terrified. Why wasn’t anyone leaving the train? Had anyone gotten hurt? Were we going to die?
Not after too long, we found out that the car that was ablaze, the pantry car of all places, had been detached and, thankfully, no one was hurt. The fire itself had been started by a short circuit. A passing train had noticed the mass of flames and let our conductor know before it spread to any of the other cars.
After getting all of this information, my dad, my brother Ibad, an eighth grader at SPA, and I weren’t too worried anymore, even though the fire was still blazing with full force. Everyone on the train was safe, and we thought “Hey, it’s India, these things happen.” My mom was slightly less calm.
When the pantry car had been detached from the rest of train, the engine had gone with it, so we had to wait about four hours for another train to come, pull us back to the last station we had passed, and then have another engine attached. My dad told us to try to go back to sleep, but there was no way that was happening now. Eventually, after a couple more hours in the train, while the man in the cabin next to ours spit orange seeds into our cabin, we made it to Patna. When we got to the train station, there were reporters and cameramen waiting for us. My parents got their headshots in the local newspaper. Apparently, the fire wasn’t as common as we thought.
This experience was definitely not an enjoyable one and I would never want to repeat it. But it was something that I will never forget. Plus, it goes to show you that India is not all fun and games. For me, it’s crazy and serene, unexpected and anticipated, homesickness and homely. It is insane. And I love it.